United States to support Iraq in recapturing Ramadi from ISIS

Iraqi forces spent months cutting off Daesh supply lines around Ramadi and slowly closing in on the city by taking suburban areas one after the other.

On Wednesday, Iraqi forces were preparing to push farther into the center of the Islamic State-held city of Ramadi.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Wednesday told Congress that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is contained tactically, but not strategically, and he has been urging USA allies to ramp up their efforts.

“Like stepping up the number of coalition air sorties, however, it also risks being one more step in a process of strategic incrementalism where the Obama administration reacts to every new problem with ISIS by making a limited increase in military force that is too little and too late”, Cordesman wrote recently, using another acronym for the Islamic State, which has been branded a terrorist group by the USA government.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the committee, advocated for more US troops to be sent to stem IS momentum.

The United States last week announced plans to deploy elite American military teams to Iraq to conduct raids against Islamic State there and in neighboring Syria.

The defence secretary said a large-scale deployment of USA troops would “Americanise” the conflict and create more militants.

Local officials and tribal leaders estimate between 1,200-1,700 families remain trapped inside the city by the militants.

Carter said that during the past several months, the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has provided specialized training and equipment to Iraq’s soldiers and counterterrorism fighters entering Ramadi.

APSecurity forces defend their headquarters against attacks by Islamic State extremists during sand storm in the eastern part of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, May 14, 2015. “If we went in with a large Arab force, with Turks and Egyptians even … there’s 20,000 to 30,000 of them [ISIS fighters], they are not giants”.

Iraqi security forces take positions in Ramadi, Iraq, on December 2, 2015.

“Meanwhile, Russia, which has publicly committed to defeating ISIL, has instead largely attacked opposition forces”.

“We are very hopeful that Ramadi will be liberated before the end of this year”, he said.

McGurk cautioned that further advances may also be slow going.

The Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State’s heart and soul for unleashing global terrorism, will stay that way for the foreseeable future.

“They’re holding civilians as hostages, and as human shields, and so we want to do this in a very careful and deliberate way”, he said. “So the fighters left on the north side of the river can’t retreat and the fighters on the south side of the river can’t send reinforcements”. “While we can enable them, we cannot substitute for them”.

“The intelligence we’re missing is the intelligence you gain on the ground”, he said.